Mehmet E. Yaya

Terrorism and Tourism: The Case of Turkey

Using a time series method called ‘transfer function’, this paper examines the effect of terrorism on tourism in Turkey. The results indicate that there exists a negative but small impact of terrorism, which is observed within approximately one year. However, terrorist attacks in Turkey have accounted for a reduction of six million foreign tourists over the last nine years. Moreover, the economic cost of terrorism in the tourism industry was more than

Racial/Ethnic Differences in Income Inequality Across US Regions

700 million in 2006. However, terrorist attacks in continental Europe and America, and an active war involving a neighboring country, had no effects on tourism in Turkey.

Political Institutions, Trade Openness, and Economic Growth: New Evidence

In this study we investigate the differences in income inequality among different racial/ethnic groups in the United States using both personal and household income. We find that income inequality is negatively related to the percentage of males but that the impact is muted for blacks as opposed to whites or Hispanics. In addition, we find income inequality among blacks and Hispanics is affected in vastly different ways, due to unemployment, than for whites. Finally, the impacts on inequality from the exclusion of given groups is significantly influenced by education and the percentage of males contributing to household income but not in a uniform manner for whites, blacks, and Hispanics.

Gender differences in income inequality among immigrant populations to the United States

ABSTRACT We present new evidence on the relationship between political institutions, trade openness, and economic growth using a panel of over 200 countries and eight nonoverlapping five-year average observations for 1975–2010. We explore (1) whether political institutions lead to lower economic growth rates and (2) whether income per capita and trade openness curb the persistence of these institutions. The panel data estimation results suggest that most of our political institution proxies do not hinder economic growth. However, increases in per capita income, trade openness, and education curtail the persistence of these political institutions.

Racial/Ethnic Income Inequality Responses to a Government Maintenance Program in the United States

Abstract This work examines the level of income inequality of immigrants to the United States. We separately examine income inequality of males and females using several different inequality measures for robustness. The work finds that males have the traditional inverted “U” relationship between inequality and growth but females have the opposite. These differences are caused by several key factors but mainly due to the level of work force participation of the two groups. Finally, we examine the differences in inequality between immigrants who have been in the country for a decade and newly arrived immigrants finding that income inequality is much greater for new immigrants.

The short-run relationship between real effective exchange rate and balance of trade in China

In this study, the authors investigate the income inequality responses of Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics in the United States to the income maintenance program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) using cross sections of state-level data. The results show that this program indeed reduces income inequality but the impacts are not uniform across racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, the authors find that Blacks have results that differ from those of the other two groups or those of the United States as a whole. These results are robust when using either the Gini or Theil measure of inequality.

The Impact of Hurricanes on Wages and Employment: The Case of Louisiana

This paper analyzes the short-run relationship between the real effective exchange rate of Chinese Yuan and the balance of trade. We examined the causality between effective exchange rate and balance of trade using Granger-Causality Test. The findings are striking. The test suggests that in the short run balance of trade causes a change in effective exchange rate but not vice versa. The uni-directional relationship between exchange rate and balance of trade compels the use of transfer function methodology. Transfer Function estimation shows that the balance of trade has a 3-4 month delayed effect on effective exchange rate in China. Moreover, the coefficients are positive suggesting that a positive trade performance shock leads to a favorable change in exchange rate in China.

Testing the dependency theory on small island economies: The case of Cyprus

The shortcomings of a commonly used technique, difference in difference, have recently been addressed with Generalized Difference in Difference (GDD) method. This study relaxes some of the restrictions of GDD and utilizes hurricanes as exogenous shocks to determine their impact on wages and employment in three different industries (construction, manufacturing, and leisure & hospitality) in Louisiana from 2001 to 2010. The results suggest that the hurricanes have a significant adverse effect on wages in construction and leisure & hospitality sectors. During the time period studied, the parishes that are directly hit by a hurricane suffer a 6 percent drop in wages in leisure and hospitality sector while the neighboring parishes suffer 5 percent drop in construction sector.